Health Care Update: New Medicare Advisory Council in WH to call the shots on reimbursement..House Bill OUTLAWS new Private Insurance..

Update 5: Ace has word a deal may be reached thanks to the AMA endorsing the Obama Rangel plan. Good Gawd, like the AARP they have sold their members down the river….we are up the creek and down the river…we’re Rollin, rollin, rollin, rollin, rollin down the riverrrrr, and we dont have paddles…….

Tina (and the rat frakker Ike) courtesy of 3mily5ays
A commenter on Ace clarifies the prohibition of private policies in the House bill:

128 Ace,

The deal with the grandfathering is that, yes you can keep your old plan but any new private policies written after this crap sandwich kicks in will basically have to mimic the public option. They’re putting in all sorts of new regulations that are the framework of the public option, and the regulations will apply to all private plans going forward. Only difference is that the public plan administrators have the benefit of being able to dictate how much they will pay to the doctors and hospitals and will avoid taxes at all levels (cause we all know the government won’t tax itself), whereas the private insurance companies do not have the luxury of doing either.

So, basically, if you lose your old private plan you can choose between the crappy government plan that you’re being taxed out the wazoo for, or you can pay out of your pocket for a “private” plan that’s exactly like the crappy government one (that you’ve already payed into). That is, if you even qualify for the government plan. Last I saw the cut-off for singles was $40K per year income and families was somewhere around $75K. So these “privileged” folks will be stuck not only paying for the public plan via their tax dollars, but also forced to buy private insurance on top of it or pay a fine for not having insurance because they don’t qualify for the public plan.

Nice, huh.

Posted by: Mandy P. at July 16, 2009 02:46 PM (MK6Kx)

Update 4: Rep Joe Barton R-TX on the health care bill

Update 3: Message from the Tea Party Patriots, go find your local Health Care Freedom Rally events here
Update 2: Ed AP at HA has a new thread up covering the CBO pushback…

Update – Max Baucus (D-MT) head of the Sen Finance Cmte says he will have a deal to get the bill out of Cmte today, this despite the head of the CBO saying the proposed plan will NOT reduce health care spending by the government and will in fact INCREASE the spending.

Meanwhile TOTUS is trying to get power away from Congress to define Medicare reimbursement for all local providers. If that happens, LOOK OUT. Calls to Congress are the only way Seniors have to ensure their Medicare is not gutted. This move to strip Congress of control over Medicare reimbursements would achieve a reduction in expenses all right, the elderly would be denied care, we have discussed this before, Ezra Klein on the scheme here

After weeks of talk, the White House began circulating draft legislation Wednesday spelling out President Barack Obama’s proposal that Congress surrender much of its authority over payment rates for Medicare to a new executive agency.

The proposed five-member Independent Medicare Advisory Council would be charged with making two annual reports dictating updated rates for Medicare providers including physicians, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health and durable medical equipment. Congress could block the recommendations only if lawmakers agreed within 30 days on a resolution, and the greater veto power would lie with the White House itself.

For this reason, the delayed effective date of Sept. 15, 2014 — well after Obama’s first term — may be reason for pause for Democrats. And in the midst of what is already a difficult debate over healthcare reform, the proposal represents a huge shift of power away from the legislative branch.

This is especially true if Democrats go ahead with their statutory pay-go proposal that would require future Congresses to come up with savings or new revenues to pay for legislative initiatives. In fact, the current House healthcare proposal incorporates hundreds of billions of dollars in such offsets; if the whole payment decision process is shifted to the executive branch, it will be harder for lawmakers to claim the same level of savings in the future…

…from HA a great video from samadamsalliance

Original Post:

Call THESE Critters of you live in their district!!!

These are the Blue Dogs who can save the health care system as we know it, if they stand up for what they know is right.

MM has the details..

…“They went home and got beat up about energy,” said a senior aide to a Blue Dog lawmaker. “Now you’re going to jam healthcare down their throat and send them home for a month?”

Buck up the Blue Dogs with a phone call – Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121:

Reps. John Barrow (D-Ga.)
Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.)
Baron Hill (D-Ind.)
Jim Matheson (D-Utah)
Charlie Melancon (D-La.)
Mike Ross (D-Ark.)
Zack Space (D-Ohio)

Ed at HA brings us this frighteneing news from the bill passed out of the House Cmte:

Investors Business Daily’s editors quickly read through the actual legislation of the House health-care reform bill looking for hidden time bombs — and they found a doozy.  On page 16 of over a thousand pages of text, they discovered a clause that essentially locks people into their current plan, and locks everyone out of any other plan. Well, presumably the public plan will be an exception:

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers….

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